'Robo Revolution' 4x 'Education-as-Usual'

Welcome to 'Robo Revolution' In 2030.

We have learnt so much sharing five scenarios for Education in 2030 in over 20 countries with more than 5,000 folks in the last six months. Last week we started a brief deep dive into how the Education-as-Usual scenario was measuring up and this week we contrast those results with the ‘Robo Revolution’ scenario.

Big Picture, with significant samples from over 50 countries, more than 25% of respondents chose “Robo Revolution” as their preferred scenario out of the five choices. In addition, on average the cohort estimated it was 60% likely that “Robo Revolution” is how 2030 will look when we get there.

If at this point you are wondering what the five scenarios are or have not yet read Education in 2030, you can either quickly dive into a 3-minute read of the scenario here or download the full report.

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'Robo Revolution' more likely than 'Education-as-Usual'

Estimating the probability of a scenario over 10 years from now is a big call and to keep the math simple, we asked respondents to assess each scenario independently. The scenarios are not necessarily mutually exclusive and the cognitive load of splitting up 100% into five scenarios was not as effective in our view as asking our experts to make an independent assessment of “How likely is the following scenario for Education in 2030?”

The chart below shows the distribution of responses for the two bookend scenarios of “Education-as-Usual” versus “Robo Revolution” and they are quite telling.

You can see the Education-as-Usual scenario follows a generally normal distribution weighted towards less likely with 5% difference between the two extremes of “Highly Likely” and “Highly Unlikely” and 3% difference between “Probably” and “Probably Not”.

But the Robo Revolution scenario is a whole different ball game. The most popular assessment was “Probable” with nearly a quarter estimating it was “Highly Likely” and almost another quarter estimate it was “50:50”. Only 6% of respondents assessed “Robo Revolution” as “Highly Unlikely”

Role Perspectives

Respondents of the survey provided their role or the role that most closely resembles their role and the charts below break out responses across preference and probability by role.

The left-hand chart shows what percentage of respondents with that particular role, chose ‘Education-as-Usual’ as their preferred scenario out of the five choices for Education in 2030.

The right-hand chart shows what percentage of respondents chose ‘Robo Revolution’ as their preferred.

Teachers preferred Education-as-Usual more than peers and they also preferred Robo Revolution the least of their peers. But more teachers prefer Robo-Revolution than Education-as-Usual by a 2% margin. Entrepreneurs and Services Providers stacked the extremes, they least prefer Education as Usual and most prefer Robo Revolution and the margin is a good 25%.

Investors ran middle of the pack for their peer group but still preferred Robo Revolution more than 2x their preference for Education as Usual. 8 out of every 100 investors prefer Education as Usual and 20 out of every 100 prefer Robo Revolution.

Country Perspectives

The scenario preferences by country are always interesting. We spent a lot of time consoling our Finnish colleagues last week that whilst Finland does indeed prefer Education-as-Usual more than peers, 85% of Finnish respondents prefer one of the other four scenarios and this should be interpreted with pride.

Country preferences for Robo Revolution will no doubt cause as much, if not more of a stir.

China topped the charts with 43% of respondents preferring Robo Revolution with a solid lead on Singapore and Brazil. At the other extreme, our French colleagues are clearly not interested in either Education-as-Usual nor Robo Revolution, the two totalling 20%. Having said that, as a cohort they still prefer Robo Revolution (12%) more than Education-as-Usual (8%).